Something Remains: Choice
by xxDark-Elfxx
Summary: Oneshot in the sense that all of my Something Remains can be read alone or in a series. Here's another one, also less Rrated, hmm. Please review!


A/N: Set pre-Shroud. My idea as to why Vala was so resolute in Line in the Sand. She made up her mind to save Daniel, hell or high water.

**Choice**

She plans her dreams. Like a commander in battle or a sailor on the sea, she plots and courses her nightly excursions. There are steps to take, acts to perform, a self-invented ritual as vital to her sanity as air to her lungs. All with the goal of controlling what roads her sleeping soul will wander down. Ever since that day. When he told her to go, told her he'd be right behind her, in a voice not entirely his own and one that brooked no argument. She was pulled from his side and left to carefully constructs the transitory path back home.

It begins with a bath, water just shy of burning, warming her skin as she shivers inside. Next the music, softly filling the unwanted emptiness with rising and falling notes of no consequence. And lastly, reverently, the book.

She found it in his locker while searching for something, anything, tangible to remind her why she is who she's becoming. There it lay, unassuming in its simple brown leather binding and creamy white pages, the key to her resilience. She picked it up and the cracked spine fell open in her hand like a half-forgotten friend into an embrace, with the ease of things all but the body has discarded as unimportant.

At the first glimpse of his smooth, strong handwriting, her eyes blur and her stomach clenches. These are his words, his life's breath, a creation of his mind as rendered by his flesh. A mind that even now might be straining under the weight of knowledge not intended for the uninvited, and flesh that may well be regenerating after being burned for unbelieving. Yet in these impartial pages his self is preserved, forever as it was when ink stained the virgin skin, like wine into a vessel, poured from the well of his soul and corked, to grow fonder with age. Her fingers trace over the letters, feeling the difference in those written in the passion of discovery and those written in grief and uncertainty. She's in here, as is their family. His love and caring for them is evident in his observations. And the growth of those same feelings towards her are captured as well.

The brush of lips against her shoulder pulls her from her thoughts, and she lets her head fall back onto his strong shoulder, lets him take the weight of her body and the weight of her worry. His hands are lazy under the water, skimming over her stomach to tickle at her ribs before cupping her breasts, long fingers gently kneading. The tip of his tongue tastes the edge of her ear, his warm breath caressing the gentle whorls as his voice seems to surround her, reverberating in her mind.

"That's my private journal, you know."

Running her foot up the legs now tangling with her own, she turns to sample the taut skin over his neck. The taste of sweat and study and something deeper, more uniquely Daniel explodes in her mouth, but even as he angles his head to allow her better access, she draws back to retort,

"Private is such a gray term, don't you agree?"

He turns to shoot her a look of reproach and she darts in to steal a kiss, loving the way his annoyance morphs to desire and his gifted tongue slides between her lips to dance with her own. His hands return to their roving, stroking sensitive skin with a touch just firm enough not to tickle, but soft enough to be felt inside her. As his nimble fingertips find the curve of her hips, she places her hands over his, stilling them against the tidal wave of want slowly rising inside her. With a gentle kiss to her collarbone, he wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her into the sanctity of his arms, a haven of muscles and bone. Her body, wet from the water, molds to his like it was made to fit, all curves and lines and planes.

"Miss you. Miss this." The timbre of his voice is husky from the feel of her pressed up to him. He tugs gently at his fingers, still entwined with hers. She knows what he wants to do with those life-calloused hands, knows if she let him he would make love to her body till dawn. But she also knows the truth. This wondrous perfection is nothing more than a wish turned dream, her subconscious trying vainly to replace the part of her that disappeared into a backwards glance through an event horizon, image preserved of her savior on his knees, defiant to the end. So she holds back from his not-quite caress, willing to accept the comfort of his memory, but refusing anything less then the concrete reality of his coming home to her.

"Next time we make love, you'll be real. And when I wake up in the morning, you'll still be here with me." With one more regretfully tender kiss of understanding, she stares up at the vibrant eyes of the man who stole her very soul and made it over into something better, something brighter. He smiles her favorite crooked grin, nudging the tip of her nose with his own.

"One day closer to me, Vala. One day closer."

Her hand falls to his chest and just for a moment, the beat of that magnificent heart resonates inside her, matching her own pulse with it steady thrum. His arms tighten around her and her eyes drift shut to the quiet hum of his lullaby.

The feel of water long since gone cold brings her back to the world as it is, pulling her reluctantly asunder from the world as it should be. She runs her hand over the pages of his journal again, stroking the entry from the day after the battle at the super gate. He wrote about his fears for the upcoming days and the surprise he felt that he would indeed have killed Adria. But it is the words in between the revelations that draw her mind. 'Vala's home.' How like her Daniel to know he was bringing her to her home before she did. She would give anything to be able to write the same about him. And one day she vows she will. Stepping out of the tub, she looks in the mirror and, with a toss of her hair, sends a message to the universe.

She has been a goddess, a pirate, a thief, a lover. And now she will be the who brings him home.

There has never been a choice.


End file.
